So, you think you are really creative and can rock any brainstorming session like no one else!

But how creative are you?Can creativity be measured and evaluated? This blog post offers some answers and 3 ways to test your creativity.

As creativity’s role is becoming more and more essential in people’s life both at home, in school and at work, scientists are increasingly paying attention. In fact, the “science of creativity” has developed into a popular field of research.

1. Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT)

The truth is that even though the interest has grown exponentially recently, research on the topic is not new. In fact, as early as the 1940s, E. Paul Torrance, nicknamed “the father of creativity”, began researching creativity in order to improve American education. The problem is that, as any good scientist, Torrance first needed to be able to quantify, measure and analyze creativity.

That’s how he came up in the 60’s with the set of tests named Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (or TTCT) where Torrance claims to be able to measure what he calls “divergent thinking“: the characteristic of coming up with more answers, or more original answers, rather than deriving a single best answer.

One of the most iconic elements of the TTCT was the Incomplete Figure test; the drawing equivalent of exquisite corpse. Here are 2 examples of incomplete drawings :

Give it a try: download the template here (or this one, and this one) and let your creativity do the drawing.

2. Remote Associates Tests (RAT)

Remote Associates Tests are my favorite because they are more like puzzles instead of open-ended tests which are difficult to gauge. The concept is simple: you are given 3 seemingly unrelated words, such as “falling , actor , dust”, and you are asked to come up with a fourth word that connects all 3 words. In this example, the answer is “star” for “falling star”, “movie star (actor)” and “stardust”.

Finding the 4th word is not always easy especially when trying a methodical approach or brute force. The answer often comes as a flash of insight (almost out of nowhere). Relaxing your mind, and letting it wander, instead of applying the typical “think! think! think!” approach works much better. Supposedly being sleepy and drunk helps too.

3. Alternative Uses Task

Developed by J.P. Guilford in 1967, the Alternative Uses Task tests evaluate creativity by having you think of as many possible uses for a common house hold item (such as a brick, paperclip, or newspaper)

Example: name all the uses for a brick:

A paperweight

A doorstop

A mock coffin at a Barbie funeral

To throw through a window

To use as a weapon

To hit my sister on the head with

The test also measures divergent thinking and scoring is comprised of 4 components:

Originality – how common is the use (vs. other people’s responses). For brick: “doorstop” (common) vs. ” A mock coffin at a Barbie funeral” (disturbingly original?)

Fluency – total number of uses found

Flexibility – or different categories. In this case there are five different categories (weapon and hit sister are from the same general idea of weapon)

A powerful technique to organize and generate ideas

A mind map is a diagram used to visually outline information. A mind map is often created around a single word or text, placed in the center, to which associated ideas, words and concepts are added. Major categories radiate from a central node, and lesser categories are sub-branches of larger branches. Categories can represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items related to a central key word or idea.

And you go, huh?

Mind mapping is one of those techniques which is easy to demonstrate or show but difficult to describe in words.

Check out the following video for a quick primer using a basic example:

Why is this technique superior to your typical lists of bullet points?

It has to do with the way the brain functions. It doesn’t organize its information like sentences in a book, instead it’s stored as a large collection of ideas connected with one another.

Traditional note taking: a linear recording of information without connecting the concepts together. Doing without thinking

Mind mapping: radial explosion of visually interconnected ideas

The technique has been widely used to promote creativity, problem solving, and synergetic ideation. The main reason why it’s such a powerful tool for those activities is because it forces to create association of ideas in a very visual way which tends to be the brain’s favorite way to recall and create new relationship between ideas.

To get started, all you need is a blank sheet of paper, a few colored pens and you are ready to go using the following guidelines suggested by Tony Buzan himself:

Guidelines on how to create a mind map

Start in the center with an image of the topic, using at least 3 colors.

Use images, symbols, codes, and dimensions throughout your mind map.

Select key words and print using upper or lower case letters.

Each word/image is best alone and sitting on its own line.

The lines should be connected, starting from the central image. The central lines are thicker, organic and thinner as they radiate out from the centre.

Make the lines the same length as the word/image they support.

Use multiple colors throughout the mind map, for visual stimulation and also to encode or group.

Develop your own personal style of mind mapping.

Use emphasis and show associations in your mind map.

Keep the mind map clear by using radial hierarchy, numerical order or outlines to embrace your branches.

If you want to share your mind maps, or simply prefer to create them digitally, they are dozens of applications for desktop applications, web sites, and iPad/tablet/mobile applications to help you. Checkout Mind Mapping Software Blog for an impressive collection of reviews and recommendations.

Not convinced on where you would use mind mapping? Here are 100 reasons.

So, the next time you need to organize ideas in a new way or want to trigger new ideas, why don’t you give mind mapping a try?

PS: Have you ever used mind mapping? How did you like it? Share your comments below.

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Tap into the power of metaphors to boost your creativity

Credits: http://bit.ly/111cR4a

I once heard that Ridley Scott pitched his idea for his movie “Alien” as “Jaws in space” (confirmed here). How brilliant is that?! With that simple 3-word metaphor, the director was able to convey his novel idea for a movie so precisely that it baffles the mind!

A metaphor is a soft thinking technique connecting two different universes of meaning. Examples: Food chain, flow of time, fiscal watchdog. The key to metaphorical thinking is similarity. The human mind tends to look for similarities.

Excessive logical thinking can stifle the creative process, so use metaphors as a way of thinking differently about something. Invent and look for metaphors in your thinking. They are also potent tools as they make you and your audience look at things a different way.

Imaging within another sensory or conceptual frame can help. For example, in the visual images of spring which inspired Vivaldi’s “La Primavera”, one can clearly re-imagine then while listening to that piece of music.

When thinking of a problem and its solution, it helps to expose the mind with many related concepts. The hope is that the juxtaposition of 2 or more of those concepts will create a eureka moment that will lead to a solution. It’s not always a perfect fit but by stretching and examining the parts of the connection, you can start discovering new facets of the imperfect metaphor to lead you to the perfect solution.

Flex your metaphorical thinking muscles

Coming up with metaphors might come naturally for some of us as our brains tend to think metaphorically in the first place. However, it’s sometime difficult to force their creation. It’s more like “they come to you” and not “you go to them”. That’s where English majors have an edge. That said, you can become good at it with some practice.

Here are some interesting resources on how to create and make use of metaphors.

I have been working for the same company for many, many years. When I talk to my friends from college, they ask me how could I be working for the same company for so long? I tell them I’m still having fun and still doing things that interest me. In asking them why they have hopped from one company to another, I often come to the realization that it’s not the company they dislike, but it’s their job. Digging some more, it’s clear that regardless of the company, they will very likely always end up disliking their job.

Why? Because, they are missing one important ingredient, passion. For me, tinkering with computer “stuff” is something I’ve always loved. And it’s that passion that lead me to buy my first computer and made me sign up for my first Computer Science 101 class. That love is still there. Yes, I was and am still a proud nerd.

Many people start just like me, though that passion erodes over time partially because of the jobs they end up taking but mostly because they decide that they are no longer happy and don’t make room in their daily job for things they do enjoy. This recent article in Inc. brings up a similar point: they complain about their job but don’t do anything about it.

Maybe I have been lucky to have managers who have allowed me some wiggle room to explore new technologies, new ideas, and new methods to keep that passion alive.

Example 1: back in the mid-90s, we used to create bug reports using a home grown app (there was no Bugzilla back then) running on an xterm-type of terminal. The Internet just started to emerge with technology like Apache and CGI. I pushed to start using it as a new front-end for the bugs system , and people are still using today. Though phased out for the RallyDev tool, it was fun to develop and watch it grow to 150,000+ logged bugs.

Example 2: when I became a manager in early 2000, I realized that I wasn’t very good at the tedious job of keeping track of my team’s many tasks. Hence, I created “Tasks!”, a tool that allowed me to assign tasks to people, keep track of changes/updates (with email automatically sent to assignee and assignor), and monitor progress during the development and QA. At the end of the week, when meeting with my product manager, I had a nicely formatted report to share with him and talk about the week’s progress. I loved the tool because it took care of the things I didn’t like to do.

I could provide other examples, but you get the point.

Did my company breathe that passion into me? No.

Would I be as passionate at another firm? Probably. At least, I would hope so.

Did my company do something right to keep and nurture the passion aliveinstead of snuffing it? Yes!

Do I have a point here? Yes! My point is actually two-fold:

If you are a nerd like me, a jock or just an average Joe with a passion for computers, find a way to remain passionate about it and share that passion with your co-workers and managers. If you’ve found something new that you are excited about, find some time to explore it (at work or home) and share your findings/excitement with the other nerds around you.

If you are a manager (or a company), please do allow your employees to spend an hour here and there to explore next technologies and share it with the rest of the group. Google has it right allowing its employees to spend 20% of their time on things that interest them.

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Innovation doesn’t always come from experts.
Beware of the “curse of knowledge”

It’s the early 1950s.

Ruth Handler watched her daughter Barbara play with paper dolls, and noticed that she often enjoyed giving them adult roles. At the time, most children’s toy dolls were representations of infants. Realizing that there could be a gap in the market, Handler suggested the idea of an adult-bodied doll to her husband Elliot, a co-founder of the Mattel toy company. He was unenthusiastic about the idea, as were Mattel’s directors as they found it silly. Little girls didn’t want to play with grownups! Besides, what did Ruth know about the toy business? She was just an outsider!

During a trip to Europe in 1956 with her children, Ruth Handler noticed a strange-looking doll in the window of a cigarette shop in Germany. The doll was eleven inches tall and had platinum-blond hair, long legs, and an ample bosom. Her name was Bild Lilli. What Ruth didn’t know, because she was an outsider and she didn’t know the language and local culture, is that the doll was actually a “sex symbol”, sold mainly to middle-aged men.

When the family returned home, Handler continued to lobby her husband to build an Americanized version of the Bild Lilli. She eventually succeeded but it took 3 years to convince Mattel’s executives to build it and for the first Barbie to be released.
Before long, the plastic toy became the cultural icon that we know today. Mattel and its reluctant executives have sold over 1 billion Barbies in 150 countries.

The outsider’s point of view

The moral of the story is that Ruth Handler was an outsider. She was an outsider to the German culture which made her fail to grasp the bawdy back-story of Bild Lilli; if she had, she would have certainly not bought it for her daughter.
She was also an outsider to the toy industry which provided her with a fresh pair of eyes. She wasn’t suffering from what’s sometime known as “the curse of knowledge” where being an expert in a field prevents one from coming up with novel/radical ideas.
It’s difficult to escape the “curse of knowledge”. However, there are techniques and approaches that I will describe in future posts that can help.
That said, there is one thing that is easy to do… don’t be afraid to seek outsiders for your problems/projects.

Seek a “fresh pair of eyes”

Like most managers who have been working on a project for awhile, I know mine pretty well but I might know very little about other projects done in my company. We all have a good understanding of the industry in which we are revolving but I still remain an outsider to those other projects. Would I mind, if every so often they invited me to one of their brainstorming sessions to get a fresh perspective on their work? Absolutely not!
I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that way and other people will jump at the chance to be the “fresh pair of eyes”, no?
Another good source of “fresh pair of eyes” that might be easily discarded by seasoned managers are: interns and new grads. That’s a mistake to me. Give them a chance to absorb enough knowledge so that they understand the subject matter. But also elicit their feedback, ideas, comments and opinions, early and often. Be open-minded and listen to what they have to say.

Who knows, between the two of you, you might come up with the next Barbie…